


Symmetric Difference

by Anonymous



Category: Half Life VR But AI is Self Aware
Genre: Character Study, M/M, No sex in this but I marked it as explicit anyway, Non-Consensual Touching, Sexual Harassment, misuse of noclip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There was a crow in the movie theater and it was getting on Gordon’s nerves that someone hadn’t let it out by now. By someone he meant the G-Man, because besides the Science Team and Tommy’s dad, the artificial butter scented space was deserted, usual dead eyed teenagers behind the ticket desk missing.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 13
Kudos: 45
Collections: Anonymous





	Symmetric Difference

**Author's Note:**

> There's no sex, but consent is explicitly not given. 
> 
> Inspired by tigerdrop/marzanna's thoughts on the Act 3 Commentary Intro, though he doesn't condone noncon at all so please don't bother him.

There was a crow in the movie theater and it was getting on Gordon’s nerves that someone hadn’t let it out by now. By someone he meant the G-Man, because besides the Science Team and Tommy’s dad, the artificial butter scented space was deserted, usual dead eyed teenagers behind the ticket desk missing. 

If Gordon tried to remember how they had actually gotten into the crusty building, he got a headache. Better to go along with it than try to ask questions. Enjoy the ride now that he wasn’t constantly worried he was going to die.

The obnoxious bird kept squawking at him from the eaves of the uncannily tall theater. The whole place gave him a weird vibe. Not quite alien planet time travel reality breaking vibes but still enough unnatural energy that Gordon felt his teeth chatter and his recently regrown right hand itch. With the murder omens swooping around his head he might as well have changed genres and fallen into some gothic horror nonsense. 

Gordon glared into the crow’s beady eyes over his shoulder as he ducked into the deserted men’s restroom. 

The semi-public bathroom at least looked normal, made of the cheapest linoleum, metal, and plastic. It also smelled vaguely of popcorn and looked appropriately shabby. 

Gordon picked one of the middle urinals and undid the clasps on the front of the HEV suit. Between fighting for his life and escaping Black Mesa, he hadn’t had a relaxing pee in about a month. The G-Man wouldn’t spy on him with his dick out, right? Gordon deserved some autonomy for once.

He grumbled to himself about the unfairness of it all, talking himself through the constant panic buzzing behind his skull that he hadn’t figured out how to ignore. 

The mirror behind the sinks was splattered with water and soap, random flecks of dirt denser at the bottom, where they were met with a counter stained with old pink scum and calcium deposits. Gordon stared at the stream of lukewarm water as it gushed around his fingers and got lost in scrubbing the dirt out of minute cracks in his gloves. 

He was lamenting his bizarre post-Resonance Cascade situation in the small moment of privacy he thought he had, when a floating Benrey showed up front behind the bathroom mirror like a Bloody Mary joke gone wrong. 

Benrey’s body was floating a good ten centimeters off the ground and the guard’s legs were stuck through the countertop. Seeing the alien again was unnerving, for multiple reasons. After going to Xen and dealing with a skyscraper sized Benrey who could have easily killed him if the guard had really wanted to, Gordon got the terrible feeling that Benrey was playing with him. Maybe the security guard had always thought the whole apocalypse scenario Gordon started was for fun, a great way to meet friends and influence people. Gordon didn’t want to be the one to explain the misunderstanding. 

Why did the guard have it out for him in particular? Maybe it was because he was just so easy to fuck with, short fuse earning him a reputation even in graduate school for being an absolute mess. He thought that leaving academia would make it easier on his poor heart but just his luck that he had caught the eye of a certain nonhuman.

Once he got over the initial shock of Benrey’s appearance, they fell back into their old routine immediately, Gordon sputtering with indignation and hysteria while Benrey was his usual incomprehensible self. The crow had got into the room somehow, and he had to shout over the cawing and incomprehensible seagull noises while Benrey shamed him into flushing the urinal and then tried to sit his butt on one while Gordon freaked out in the corner.

The baseball in the toilet is what tipped it over the edge for Gordon, and when he caught Benrey trying to sneak through the stall wall behind him, he almost sobbed with laughter. The guard’s deadpan ‘oh fuck’ when he realized Gordon could see him in the mirror made it worse and Gordon had to make a break for it. 

He was almost to the door when he got a nasty shock. There was a gloved hand inside his skull, Benrey’s reaching through the back of the head, fingers poking through the cartilage of his nose and tickling his nasal cavity. The feeling was odd and mostly unpleasant, and Gordon felt the urge to sneeze before he lurched against the wall and pulled apart the intersecting flesh. 

“Don’t, god, you’re not real you’re not real you’re not—“

The crow flew towards them again, and the hidden seagull shrieked like Gordon was eating fries at the beach instead of trapped in an empty movie theater. 

Gordon stumbled, thrown off balance by the noise and his own big feet. He had to get back to the theater, where his friends were, go there and be safe in the dim, comforting light of the huge screen showing the worst days of his life, and instead he slowly toppled over and slid into the right most urinal.

“Do you even wash your hands, bro?” Benrey asked. “Picked up that ball in the toilet with your dirty mitts, then you tried to run outta here.”

The best way to deal with Benrey was to acknowledge him, deflect, and make an escape when Gordon didn’t think he was going to instantly die. It was like a treacherous improv routine where everyone including Gordon was positively psychotic. Unlike his other pals, Gordon could feel pain. 

“Dirty boy, doesn’t flush, doesn’t wash his hands.” Benrey continued. 

“I do, usually.” Gordon heaved himself upright. Benrey was blocking the exit, so Gordon trudged over to the sink. He squirted a handful of pink antibacterial soap into his palm and rubbed his hands together under the faucet until the water went cold. 

When he looked up at the mirror, Benrey was almost directly behind him and Gordon jumped. 

“Boo.” 

Gordon leaned far, far out the way as Benrey edged closer, boxing him away from the exit and towards the stalls. He let himself be herded back against the toilet and Benrey resumed the game of closing the door on him whenever he tried to get out. 

It had been cute the first time, and after five minutes of the stupid back and forth Gordon had had enough.

He kicked the stall door with his HEV reinforced boot, hard enough that the hollow metal door dented in the middle and slammed into Benrey’s face. Violence never solved anything with Benrey, or for that matter, with any of the Science Team, but it was awfully satisfying. The guard’s hands jerked in the air with surprise and then his whole body passed through the door like he remembered he could do that. 

The force of impact knocked Gordon off balance, again, and he put out a hand to steady himself, heart pounding, as Benrey inched closer. 

The guard didn’t look upset or anything, but he did mutter “Lame Freeman kicks.” and come much too close for Gordon’s comfort. 

Gordon dropped to the ground and shoved himself into the next stall over. The suit wasn’t exactly made to slide, rubber and metal edges catching on the ground. While he wiggled around like a dying fish, Benrey nudged him with a foot. 

Like the hand in his braincage earlier, the foot sent small shocks through his side as it passed through his suit, underclothes, and skin to rest right against his far hip bone. It didn’t take much imagination to think some Xen parasite was seeping into his guts. 

“Okay man, we had our fun.”

Benrey kept poking his leg through Gordon’s pelvis. 

“Benrey, Christ, I’m serious. Like I know we fuck around and have fun, but you’re making me uncomfortable.”

“Don’t kill people, Benrey.” Benrey whined, in a gross imitation of Gordon’s stressed tone. “I don’t have my passport, Benrey. Why are you such a fuck-up, good friend pal Benrey?”

It felt like a rake was rearranging his guts every time Benrey clipped through his stomach. Not to mention the vague eroticism of having something moving inside his dick. The mixture of queasiness and arousal was a terrible combination and Gordon was going to need another bathroom break if it kept up and the last thing he needed was Benrey complaining while he took a shit.

“This is another human thing you don’t understand. It’s like how you got my arm cut off, remember? You were clueless, and I—I lost my fucking hand and was in a lot of pain and you didn’t fucking _get it_.”

Gordon’s voice rose half an octave by the time he got his explanation out of his dry throat. Thankfully, Benrey stopped kicking him and frowned. 

“This hurting you? Thought old ghost Benrey couldn’t do that, s’what you kept saying.”

“Yes, well, it doesn’t hurt as bad as losing an arm, but you still have enough tangibility that it feels really weird and I don’t want to puke pizza everywhere.”

If Benrey could still close doors and perch himself on a urinal then one false move would telefrag Gordon to bits. He’d seen it tested before in Black Mesa, and atoms that occupied the same space at once usually exploded or melted into a glowing lump and were used as reactor fuel. 

Benrey gazed at Gordon in his usual dull fashion. When the alien didn’t move, Gordon carefully got to his feet on the scuffed plastic flooring. He made it out of the stall and all the way to the door this time before Benrey snagged his calf with a very solid boot and sent him chin first into the grease polished handle.

Gordon lay face down on the ground for a moment, to collect himself and not fly into a frothing rage because he was being bullied by a dead alien who didn’t even know how to kill him properly. No guns, and they wouldn’t work anyway. Gordon was stuck between purgatory and a milder rim of hell. 

Then Benrey stepped into his butt and sat down, causing all the nerves in Gordon’s lower back to misfire at once. Gordon gritted his teeth and made a ‘eghgheheh’ noise while he waited for his muscles to stop convulsing. 

Another unfortunate side effect of Benrey’s residence in his lower body was that once the pain faded, he could feel the stimulation going to his dick again. 

He didn’t want to be aroused in this situation. The hard jockstrap of the HEV suit hid his boner, which had been surprisingly helpful during the marathon through Black Mesa, but the fact that he could feel Benrey meant that Benrey could probably feel him. 

That made Gordon all sorts of uncomfortable and he tried to slide away, but the narrow entrance to the bathroom made it difficult to maneuver in his suit. 

Benrey cackled while Gordon tried to use his hands to drag himself into a better position, scrabbling against the floor as his legs went numb. Once it was clear that Gordon was making progress, the security guard unfolded a leg to step into Gordon’s shoulder. 

“Look, Benrey, this is really not working for me.” Gordon gritted out between his teeth. 

“Don’t see any blood. Seems fine.”

“Yes, but you’re doing things to my body that I’m not okay with, so it’s kind of a similar deal. It’s basic consent, man.”

Benrey leaned forward so that Gordon could see the tip of a black leather boot through his shoulder pad. Every time he tried to drag himself away, it made his dick get harder and if he wasn’t careful the suit was going to start jacking him off and then he really would die. 

With a heave, he managed to flip himself onto his back. All the better for lecturing Benrey.

“Consent, like, for uh, sexual things.” Gordon added lamely. “When I say I don’t like it when you kill people or get my arm chopped off, I mean it, but it’s different with this. It’s more personal.”

Benrey was frowning slightly, confused by yet another human custom. 

“Your dick gonna fall off like a lizard tail?”

Gordon closed his eyes and concentrated very hard on not having his dick fall off while a laugh squeaked out of his throat. 

“No, it’s not going to—Okay, I don’t know why I expected anything different. More of the same workplace harassment, I guess.”

They stewed in silence for a moment. Benrey sat remarkably still, so the twinges against Gordon’s prostate stayed at a manageable level. If Benrey didn’t know what he was doing, Gordon couldn’t really hold it against him. 

That particular illusion was shattered when Benrey opened his mouth again.

“Pretty gay that we’re inside each other like this, huh?”

Gordon gave a deep, deep sigh. “Given the fact that you could turn me into a nuclear bomb at any second, I disagree.”

“You’re the one with gay little thoughts getting your junk crunked.”

“I’m not attracted to you, and even if I was, I’m still allowed to say I don’t like something.” 

Benrey stared over his head, unfocused and unimpressed. 

“Why’re you here, then?”

The ridiculousness of the question threw Gordon for a moment. 

“I was trying to leave not too long ago, for the second time.”

“We keep running into each other, though. I’ve been droppin’ hints. If you’re not careful, people are gonna get ideas.”

Gordon craned his neck to make sure, _just in case_ , that there were no witnesses to his compromising position. He also took advantage of the distraction to prop a numb foot against the wall.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s like, y’know. two bros hang out for too long and—“ 

Gordon used his foot like a lever and scrambled upright, ignoring the pull of Benrey’s not there flesh unsticking from his own, and sprinted, successfully this time, out of the bathroom. 

“Brooooo…” came Benrey’s mournful voice from behind him. Nope, nope, nope, Gordon was not going to stick around to have a mental breakdown with his dick half-hard and birds shrieking at him like he walked into a Hitchcock movie. 

That same blood-curdling dread, the _violation_ , he had felt after his arm had been cut off, was trying to make itself known, but Gordon squashed it down and made it back to his friends and his snacks mostly calm. 


End file.
